In general, several types of safety features, such as guard rails, median strips, and the like, are installed on roads as a precaution against accidents.
In addition, besides such safety features, a variety of roadside features commonly line roads, for example, underpasses, overpasses, tunnels, bridge bypasses, and the like, and collisions between such features and motor vehicles may occur due to driver carelessness.
In the case that traffic accidents occur due to collisions between motor vehicles and the features, since a large amount of collision energy is applied to vehicles, personal injury may occur as well as damages to motor vehicles.
Therefore, in a case in which a motor vehicle crashes into general roadside features rather than safety features, or other cars, the motor vehicle is required to withstand collision energy inside the vehicle.
However, there are limitations in withstanding overall collision energy generated at the time of the collision occurrence only through the energy absorption characteristics of various materials, and in most cases, a method of compensating by allowing for an increase in a material thickness has been employed.
Such a compensation method may be directly related to an increase in a weight of a vehicle body and may be problematic in terms of improving fuel efficiency, a problem having recently emerged as an important issue.
In particular, in the case of traffic accidents, if a forward portion of a vehicle body protecting explosive components of an engine, a battery, and the like does not have an appropriate degree of collision safety, the engine or battery may explode during a collision, leading to a big accident. Therefore, improving collision safety of a forward portion of a vehicle body may be an important issue.
On the other hand, the forward portion of the vehicle body provides a forward side member and a shotgun, a rigid support member generally known as an apron panel, the forward side member and the shotgun being coupled to each other via a connection bracket. However, in such a case, when collisions occur within a range of 25% or less of a width of a car at the time of a traffic accident, the connection bracket may be easily broken due to an insufficient degree of collision absorption.
In other words, in this case, not only may sales of commercial motor vehicles be reduced due to substandard safety levels, not satisfying safety standards required in vehicle collision tests, but car passenger protection may be insufficient due to insufficient shock absorption of vehicles in the event of an actual traffic accident.
Accordingly, research into a forward portion of a vehicle body having improved collision safety through a solid combination thereof has been required.